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SIYE Time:1:50 on 29th March 2024
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The Space Between
By YelloWitchGrl

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Category: Post-Hogwarts, Post-DH/AB, Post-DH/PM
Characters:All
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, General, Humor, Tragedy
Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Disturbing Imagery, Extreme Language, Intimate Sexual Situations, Mental Abuse, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Negative Alcohol Use, Rape, Sexual Situations, Spouse/Adult/Child Abuse, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse
Rating: R
Reviews: 559
Summary: Harry and Ginny's lives have finally evened out. They've faced trauma, and loss, more than most have, but they've fought hard to find a normal.

If only things could stay that way... Old enemies find new ways to seek revenge.

This story is the sequel to Bound. It would be extremely helpful if you read that first.

Warnings are to be safe. It's probably overkill. Please message me if you have any questions or concerns.
Hitcount: Story Total: 352195; Chapter Total: 3915
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
Thank you Arnel for beta'ing!

Please leave a review. I'm sticking to a one chapter a month schedule for now just to keep it manageable since the chapters are so long.. I have a new book coming out in April called Duplicity by Sarah Jaune. Please consider checking it out! If I get enough pre-orders I'll work overtime and post two chapters in a month in April. We have years yet of timeline to go in this story but it's going to be a wild ride coming up in their next year or so...




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“I do not know where the time is going,” Ginny muttered as she searched through the dress robes at Madam Malkin’s. “You were babies half a minute ago and now we’re buying dress robes for the Remembrance Ball and it’s been twenty-five years since the Battle of Hogwarts.”

“What about this one, Mum?” Lily asked her as she held up a pale gold dress.

“It’s a bit too festive, Luv,” Ginny pointed out. “We’re glad the war is over, but this is also a memorial to all who died.”

Lily grimaced. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to forget that.”

“It’s alright,” Ginny assured her as she finally found one that stood a chance of fitting Nat. “It’s nice of Scorpius to say he’d take you.” Ginny was starting to think it was more than just nice of Scorpius, but she let the matter rest. He was a nice young man and if he liked Lily… well, they’d deal with it. Scorpius was always welcome, but Ginny wasn’t about to pretend she was overly fond of Draco. “Nat,” Ginny called to her as she held up the dark green dress robes.

Nat shrugged and took them from Ginny. She had been subdued the entire time they’d been shopping. All the boys had already selected their black dress robes and they were sitting off to the side talking while the girls picked through. “I’ll go try it on.”

The problem was Nat was so short everything looked odd on her. There was no getting around it.

“What about this one?” Lily asked, catching Ginny’s attention. Her daughter held up dress robes in deepest purple, with tiny silver stars winking in the fabric. “I love this one.”

“Go try it on, then,” Ginny told her. “It will do if it fits.”

“Mum,” Al called over to her. “Can we go down to the pub and order food? I’m starving.”

Ginny was certain her son was starving. In the two months of summer hols Al had grown almost four inches and gained around two stones. All of them were six feet tall now, but Al was now almost as tall as Teddy and just a bit lighter. He hadn’t stopped eating since he came home. “Yes, alright,” she sighed as James, Scorpius, and Al bolted for the door. Hagrid was waiting outside the shop for them and he’d keep an eye on the boys. Ginny hadn’t minded Hagrid’s accompanying them. It was hard enough keeping track of five teenagers, let alone keeping them safe. Scorpius was the only one carrying his packages, having already bought dress robes and new school uniforms. Al and James had left their dress robes and school uniforms for her and she rolled her eyes in annoyance. She’d leave everything at the shop until they were done with all the school supplies and then come back for them so the boys could carry them home.

“Cowards,” Nat laughed as she came out of the fitting room, shaking her fist at the backs of the retreating boys. “It’s too long, but then everything is.”

“We can fix that,” Madam Malkin assured her as she started pinning. “It fits in the chest, which is more important. Hold still.”

“Those look great,” Lily told Nat as she came out of the fitting room in her own robes.

“You both look wonderful,” Ginny told them and was thankful neither of the girls was likely to grow four inches in two months. She didn’t want to have to shop for them while they were at school.

All of the boys had deliberately bought robes too long for them assuming they’d be growing even more.

Lily danced and twirled around, smiling as the robes flew out to flutter around her feet. When Ginny had mentioned at breakfast they’d be getting dress robes for the ball, which was only to be attended by sixth and seventh years, Lily’s face had fallen. Scorpius had immediately told her she could go with him before his face had turned an interesting shade of pink. Lily had been floating on air ever since.

“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Nat muttered as she went to take off the pinned robes.

“It will be fine,” Ginny called out. Secretly she was hoping her son would get his act together and ask Nat to the ball, but she was starting to have doubts about Al ever making a move. It was difficult to be patient, but she also knew it would be better not to push them. Ginny’s own mum had told her about how she’d desperately wanted to interfere when Ginny had her crush on Harry, but if she had it would have been disastrous. Molly Weasley had been wise enough to know it.

“I bet Al will go with you,” Lily told Nat as she glanced at herself in the mirror.

Ginny forced a smile as Nat pretended like she hadn’t heard Lily and went off to change. Nat’s confidence in herself, when it came to Al, was in the toilet.

They rejoined the boys twenty minutes later to eat lunch and then finished their shopping. “I need to get my wand looked at, Mum,” Al reminded her.

Ginny sighed and nodded. She had completely forgotten, or more likely blocked it out. Al had been flying the day before and he’d collided with one of the new trees, smacking his pocket where his wand was tucked. “Keeping your wand in your pocket like that is a really bad idea.”

“I know,” Al promised sheepishly. “But it’s definitely a little cracked and I can’t manage school if it’s not working properly. I won’t do it again.”

“Let’s go,” Ginny growled and thought of how her own mother would have told her to mend it with Spellotape. Maybe she was spoiling them a bit too much.

They all marched into the small wand shop, all except Hagrid who said he’d wait outside, and Al presented his wand to Ollivander, who was decidedly ancient now. Ever since he’d helped Harry in his quest for the Elder Wand, Ginny had definitely had mixed feelings about the old man. Still, he knew his craft and when the old coot finally died, the wizarding world would be in dire straits.

“What did you do, young man?” Ollivander asked as he examined Al’s wand.

“Er,” Al shifted from one foot to the other. “I hit a tree.”

“I hope the tree hit you back,” Ollivander said smoothly as he ran the wand through some diagnostics. “You have broken this wand beyond repair.”

“No,” Al groaned as he turned to Ginny. “Mum! I’m so sorry! I’ll pay for the new one or do as many chores as you want.”

Too right he would, but she was pleased he’d said it all the same. “Well,” she sighed heavily, “he goes back to school next week so he needs a new one.”

“Let us find one, then,” Ollivander told him.

Nat spoke up. “This one,” she said as she went to a stack of boxes and pulled it out.

Everyone stared at her and her face went scarlet.

“What makes you say that?” Ollivander asked her curiously, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Holly and unicorn tail, twelve inches. Quite strong that wand.”

“I know,” Nat said slowly, and then shook her head. She held it out to Al. “Try this one.”

Ginny could see the moment the wand was in Al’s hand that it was the right one for him. Sparks shot out the end and it lit up brilliantly. Surprised, she turned to Nat. “What was that?”

“Lucky guess?” Nat said weakly and Ginny understood instantly there was something she didn’t want to say in front of the creepy, old man.

“Good thing, too,” James told her with a laugh, intentionally diffusing the awkward moment. “I want ice cream and the shop would have closed if he’d had to try all these wands.”

“Young lady,” Ollivander said, clearly not deterred. “When do you finish at Hogwarts?”

“Uh,” Nat shifted uncomfortably. “I have two years left.”

“What were your O.W.L. results?”

“We don’t have them, yet,” Scorpius told him. “They’re late.” It was a sore spot among all of them, but especially Rose who was extremely impatient.

“Mm,” Ollivander murmured. “Come see me when you’re done with school. We should talk.”

“Right,” Ginny said with a forced grin. “Well, let’s pay for that new wand and go get ice cream.”

Ginny was not going to encourage Nat to work for Ollivander. Absolutely not. She couldn’t leave the shop fast enough or drag them down to the creamery where the kind woman made up a special whole fat yogurt treat for Nat.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you into coming to our house for dinner, Hagrid?” Ginny asked the big man yet again.

“I can’t, Ginny,” he said with a low chuckle. “I have other plans for tonight, but I’m glad we had a chance to catch up. I’ll see everyone back at school.”

“Bye, Hagrid!” the teens called as they waved to him.

“Now,” Ginny said as she pointed to all the bags at her feet and pointed to the trunk of the Hummer. “Let’s get this loaded into the car.”

~*~

“It feels weird being back on the train,” Al told Nat as they settled in for the sixth train ride to Hogwarts. It was currently only him and Nat, since Andrew, Rose, and Scorpius were off doing whatever Prefects were supposed to do.

“We rode the train home in June,” Nat pointed out as she stretched out her short legs which almost reached the floor of the train. She scowled down at them. “I’m going to be short forever.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “But in June it wasn’t going to school. Last year the train was blown up.”

“It won’t be this year,” Nat replied confidently. “The Aurors are out in force, as is the MLE. No one is going to be able to pull that a second time.”

Al’s dad had talked about driving Nat to school, leading the train, so she could keep an eye on it for them but they couldn’t figure out a way to do that without giving away Nat’s secret, so the whole idea had been scrapped.

They both fell into a comfortable silence as the clacking of the train sang to them below their feet.

“Is it weird that we only have two more years?” Al wondered.

“I suppose so,” Nat admittedly slowly. “We’re all going to be adults this year, by the time school is done. I guess we’re going to have to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“You want to be a mum,” Al reminded her. “You know what you want.”

“I have to find a husband for that first,” Nat grimaced as she glanced out the train window, refusing to meet his eyes.

Al shifted uncomfortably. He knew what he wanted to say to her, but he also knew it just wasn’t in him to tell her. “You’ll… you’ll find someone.”

“I could work for Ollivander,” she mused. “If I can see a thread from the wand to the witch or wizard, I could sell them easily. But if I can’t make them, then it’s not quite as helpful.”

“You probably can make them,” Al said thoughtfully. “You’d likely know which wood and which magical element would go well together. You’d probably be good at that.”

“Maybe,” Nat said off-hand. “I dunno. At least my O.W.L.’s weren’t abysmal. I have a good chance of getting a job in the Ministry if I can keep it up through N.E.W.T.’s.”

Al wanted to argue with her about getting to be married and having a family, but he could see she didn’t want to discuss it. They’d all done well on their exams. When it was all said and done, Rose and Scorpius had both achieved O’s in every subject, no surprise, and Al and Nat had split their exams with four O’s and three E’s. Al had been really surprised at how well he’d done. If he’d been honest with himself, he just hadn’t thought he was that smart.

But he was comparing himself to Rose and that was probably not a fair comparison. James hadn’t done nearly as well in his O.W.L.’s, only managing two O’s, so at least he’d beaten his big brother. James, of course, wasn’t bothered. He was going to play Quidditch. None of them had any doubt about it. Scouts would be coming to James’ games to see him and it was simply a matter of which team he would be chosen for. James was just that good. Al was never going to be that good, nor did he much care. He was good enough to play on the house team, which was fine with him.

With James as his captain, of course, they were bound to have more squabbles over Al’s playing, but he simply enjoyed the game for what it was. He liked to win. He wanted to win, but it wasn’t quite the same as with his brother.

“You want to be an Auror,” Nat went on. “You’ll be good at it. You’re a lot like your dad.”

“Maybe,” he said, mimicking her earlier response. “Maybe we’ll both get what we want.”

She didn’t respond, simply stared off out of the train as a light drizzle began to fall onto the windows and the sky darkened overhead.

Whatever happened to them, Al wanted Nat to be his friend, so he didn’t say anything as the train kept rolling along. He pulled down their lunches just as the door opened and Rose, Scorpius, and Andrew tromped back in looking bad tempered and out of sorts.

“Problems?” Nat asked as she took her lunch from Al. Polly had stuffed a hamper full of food for them, all of them quite tasty. Al knew he could get sweets off the trolley but he’d long ago decided to stick with Nat. On a positive note, any baby fat he’d had was long gone. He’d always be bigger and broader, much like his Uncle Charlie, but since he’d stopped eating all the extra sweets, he’d grown leaner. Well, he amended to himself, leaner for him anyway.

“One of the first years decided to set off a stink bomb up in the front carriage,” Rose growled in annoyance. “It took us almost an hour to get rid of the smell!”

“Here,” Al said, handing her a lunch.

“What is it?” Rose asked as she opened the box and groaned. “Polly made us quiche?”

“Yep,” Al said as he handed out the other boxes to the others. “Anyway, who is the first year?”

“Jacob Jordan,” Andrew told them.

It was Al’s turn to groan. “Oh, yeah… I’d forgotten he was hitting first year this year.”

“You know him?” Andrew asked as he sat next to Al.

“His dad is best mates with my Uncle George,” Al explained. “We see their family sometimes. His dad, Lee, and his wife Marianna have four girls and one boy. Jacob is the youngest and he’s a rotten handful.”

“I didn’t want to mention that until we were alone,” Rose explained. “If you give Jacob any attention, he runs wild with it. Scolding him won’t do any good.”

“Are his sisters at Hogwarts?” Andrew wondered before taking a bite of his lunch.

“They’re all in Hufflepuff,” Rose laughed. “You’d know the second oldest, she’s in our year.”

Andrew thought for a moment before snapping his fingers. “Ryan Jordan! Right, the Jordan sisters all have boy names.”

“Alex, Ryan, Tomii, and Sam,” Rose confirmed.

“They all have those blueish-green eyes,” Andrew noted. “They have dark skin and hair, but really interesting eyes.”

“Their dad is black and their mum is white,” Al said around a mouthful of food. “She’s got curly brown hair and the same eyes as the kids. My mum jokes she bewitched her kids to make sure they’d all get her eyes.”

“So Jacob is at Hogwarts,” Rose sighed heavily. “We are doomed if he gets into Gryffindor! He’s the worst little pill, worse than any kid I’ve ever met.”

“We’ll all keep our fingers crossed he makes it into Slytherin,” Al told them honestly. He didn’t hate Jacob. Jacob was just a little kid, only eleven, but he was an obnoxious brat whenever the mood struck him. If Jacob was in Gryffindor they’d have no chance to win the house cup. “If it gets too bad they’ll expel him anyway.”

“Does it make me a horrible human being if I hope he does get expelled in his first week?” Rose asked.

Nat’s brows rose up in surprise. “You’re serious?”

“I think I am,” Rose admitted.

“I don’t think that makes you a horrible human being,” Scorpius told her. “That kid had the look of someone who wanted nothing more than to make trouble. Wherever he goes, trouble is going to follow.”

Al was extremely thankful they made it to Hogwarts without the train blowing up. They waved to Hagrid as he shepherded the first years off to the boats and they hopped in the carriages for the ride up to the school. “Hopefully this year is less stressful than last year,” Al told his friends. They’d be starting to prepare for N.E.W.T.’s so he didn’t hold out much hope, but one could dream.

“Let’s just see what happens at the sorting,” Rose muttered darkly.

To their utter horror Jacob Jordan was sorted into Gryffindor.

Al briefly considered chucking a chip at Andrew’s head. His friend’s expression of relief was so unmistakable that people around him started laughing.

“Cheer up,” James said with a laugh as he leaned over to Al. “You’re not a Prefect. You don’t have to deal with him.”

Rose chucked a chip at James’ head, channeling Al’s thoughts. James laughed as he deftly caught it and popped it into his mouth.

“I don’t like you right now,” Rose told him as Jacob sat down at the table next to another first year and promptly dumped something into the poor girl’s pumpkin juice. “Don’t drink that,” Rose commanded to the girl, standing up to take her cup and swapping it with Jacob’s. She glared down at him. “Go on, then,” she ordered.

Jacob glared up at him for a moment, and then grinned and drank the juice down in one gulp. With a loud pop the small boy was gone and in his place was a toad.

Rolling her eyes, she turned to the little girl. “What’s your name?” she asked kindly.

“Seraphina Essex, uh Sera,” she whispered timidly as the toad next to the girl popped back into the boy.

“Sera,” Rose put her hand on her shoulder and nodded to Jacob. “This boy is never, ever to be trusted for any reason. Do you understand?”

Sera nodded with a squeak, her blonde curls bobbing with the moment. “Alright.”

“Good,” Rose said as she glared at Jacob again. “I am watching you.”

Jacob stuck his tongue out at her as Rose walked away, clearly fuming.

“This is going to be a miserable year,” Al told them all darkly.

Al couldn’t have been more right if he’d been prophetic. Students had their stuff go missing, only to have it appear in someone else’s trunk, or strung up all around the castle on the sconces. School books ended up blank. The potions room was filled with large, unpoppable bubbles. The breakfast food came up tasting of soap. The entire second year of Hufflepuff had their hair dyed pink. The broom shack was raided and all the brooms were laid out on the lawn right under the Whomping Willow. None of the brooms were smashed, but the moment anyone came close enough to try to get them, the tree went into high alert and tried to kill them all. If that wasn’t enough, Al still had a lot of studying to do and all of the ink in the castle kept disappearing.

If it wasn’t all so annoying, Al would have been deeply impressed that a first year was managing it all. There was no doubt about who was doing it, of course. Jacob Jordan was absolutely behind all of it. The only problem was they hadn’t been able to catch him at any of the other pranks. No, he was too clever for that.

It wasn’t as though Jacob minded getting in trouble. He talked back in class, flouted small rules at every turn, and lost Gryffindor every single point any of them earned. He had no friends. He had, in fact, made absolutely every single student hate him.

But Jacob was bloody brilliant. No one could deny this kid was a genius. Absolutely everyone could see it within a second of speaking to him, if he spoke without a rude comment. The kid never did his homework and yet all the first years were grudgingly telling people just how advanced Jacob was in magic. He didn’t need study. He didn’t need practice. Once learned, he never forgot something.

“I don’t think I noticed it when he was small,” Rose growled in exasperation as she and most of the other sixth and seventh years helped remove all of the green paint which had appeared on all of the stone passages overnight. It was such a huge job all the older students had been excused from classes to help the teachers go through and clean it up.

“We didn’t pay any attention to him when we could help it,” Al reminded her. “We would hang out with Alex, Ryan, Tomii and Sam.” They hadn’t enjoyed the small boy. He was a brat of the highest order. Even his sisters couldn’t stand him. They left him out whenever possible. Jacob’s parents hadn’t ever seemed to be able to control him and any time they tried, they’d end up screaming in anger or walking off in defeat.

Truth be told, they hadn’t hung out with them much because of Jacob.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Rose growled in frustration. “He needs to be expelled, but he’s so brilliant!”

“Brilliant is as brilliant does,” Nat sighed as she waved her wand at another spot of green paint. “That kid is a menace.”

“But you have to admit,” Andrew said begrudgingly, “We’ve never seen anyone like him.”

The problem was it was true.

The next day, Sunday, Al wandered over to the Hufflepuff table and straight for Ryan. Her startling eyes met his with a bland stare. She had her light brown hair pulled back in a tail, the curling ends turning in every which way. “Can we talk after breakfast?” Al asked as he knelt down next to her.

“He’s your problem,” Ryan informed him with a knowing smile.

“Come on,” Al sighed. “Take pity and be nice, Ry! We’re getting desperate.”

Ryan popped a bite of sausage in her mouth and considered him carefully. “Alright, then,” she said finally. “It’s nice out today. I’ll meet you down by the lake after breakfast.”

“Thanks,” Al said as he stood and went back to the table. He saw Jacob studying him and Al stared right back, staring him down. To his surprise, Jacob turned away first and went back to eating. He was eating by himself, without anyone close by him. Everyone knew he’d put something in their food if they sat too close so he was always by himself.

Al would have felt sorry for him if he weren’t such a nuisance.

They ended up finishing breakfast about the same time and all met just on the grounds right after breakfast. “Ryan, this is Nat, Scorpius, and Andrew,” he told her.

“I am aware,” Ryan said dryly as she eyed each of them. “We have been in classes together for over five years.”

“I don’t think we’ve really talked, though,” Nat told her as they began the walk down to the lake and away from the castle.

Al kept an eye out for Jacob, but he hadn’t seen him since they’d left the castle and he didn’t think the kid could have heard what Al had asked of his sister. Still, he kept an eye out for him, unsure of what the kid might do to them.

“I suppose not,” Ryan agreed as she stuck her hands in her denim pockets and studied the brilliantly blue sky overhead. Only a few wisps of clouds floated overhead, serving to showcase the bright sky even more. “It almost feels like spring today.”

“It hasn’t felt like spring since school started,” Rose told her grumpily. “Your brother is a monster!”

“Rose,” Andrew hissed out in warning.

Ryan’s lips quirked into a grin. “Oh, Rose is only speaking the truth. I can’t fault her for that.”

They all fell silent until they’d reached the lake and planted themselves on the grass. They seemed to be waiting for Ryan, Al realized.

Ryan picked at a blade of grass and twirled in between her fingers. “It’s been… it’s been a struggle with him.”

“That has to be an understatement,” Rose said bluntly.

“A mild understatement,” Ryan agreed evenly. “Jacob has completely taken over our family. He didn’t speak until he was four, and when he did, he started out with gibberish. It was hard on my parents. He could do magic, without a wand that should never have been possible. He understood how things worked. He was…” her shoulders slumped and Al felt a pang of sympathy wash through him. “He was so difficult! We were all constantly being tormented by him.”

Rose’s face fell as she reached out for Ryan. “You never really talked about it.”

“No, well,” Ryan shook her head and grimaced. “Last time we hung out was just before Hogwarts and he was still so small. But my parents realized he was not really fit to be around people. That’s partially why they stopped inviting people over.”

“Oh, Ryan… I’m so sorry.”

Ryan’s expression was bleak for only a second before her face slid back into one of supreme unconcern. “Alex was already at Hogwarts, and you know how sweet she is,” Ryan said, glancing to Al and Rose, who nodded. “She was such a Hufflepuff. I put on the Sorting Hat and it started to tell me Gryffindor and I just knew… I knew if I went into Gryffindor, Jacob would be there too. So I begged the hat to put me in with Alex. Then I told Sam and Tomii about the hat trick and they did the same thing.”

“You…” Andrew cleared his throat as his eyes narrowed. “You deliberately picked a different house to get away from your brother?”

“It’s going to get worse,” Ryan told them seriously.

“He doesn’t seem mean or malicious,” Nat said hesitantly. “I mean, it’s all pranks but no one is really hurt or lost anything. He hadn’t destroyed anything.”

Ryan nodded and dropped the blade of grass. “He’s bored with classes. They’re a bore to him. He’s going to get in trouble just to keep himself entertained. It’s what he does.”

“What about your parents?” Nat asked.

“They don’t know what to do with him,” Ryan said with a shrug. “They’re at their wits end.”

Al wondered dully why things couldn’t just be simple for them. Why couldn’t they just have a nice, normal life?

“Your brother is a genius,” Nat said quietly.

Ryan considered her for a long moment and then nodded. “In magic, yeah… it seems like it.”

“So a genius,” Nat mused as her eyes gazed off into the distance. “The thing about really gifted children is they’re almost never neurotypical.”

“Come again?” Scorpius asked, clearly just as lost as Al was.

“So, you are what would be considered neurotypical,” Nat explained as she glanced around at all of them. “Someone who is, in general, just an average person. For someone who isn’t, they maybe have special needs or a learning disability or something else. It’s rare for someone to be that smart without a challenge.”

“I mean, he’s not that smart,” Ryan interjected. “If you ask him to do multiplication, he can’t and he’s barely reading.”

“Right,” Nat said slowly. “So he’s good at magic, but he has to learn it from watching someone else do it. He can’t just teach himself from books, which means he’s bored out of his mind without any way to fill it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Ryan said slowly as her eyes swept the group. “I mean, it would be better if he could teach himself and just do whatever he wanted, but he can’t. He seriously can’t read.”

“How did they let him in, then?” Al wanted to know.

“I think Professor Goldstein felt sorry for Mum and Dad,” Ryan admitted ruefully. “I know they had several meetings with him about Jacob. It was something they talked about a lot. But honestly, they shouldn’t have admitted him.”

“What was the alternative?” Nat challenged. “Could they have homeschooled him and challenged him enough to actually turn him into a fully functional wizard?”

Ryan fell silent and then shook her head. “He walks all over my parents.”

“I’ve noticed how alone he is,” Nat went on.

“He’s doing that to himself!” Rose growled in annoyance. “He’s an absolute menace!”

Nat held up her hands. “Yes, I can see that, but he’s not a normal kid. Maybe he’s autistic.” When only Andrew didn’t look confused, Nat dropped her head to her hands. “You don’t have autism in the wizarding world?”

“Uh,” Al shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“I know what you mean,” Andrew said slowly as he narrowed his eyes. “My… my parents had this friend,” he said as his voice hitched. It always hurt for him to talk about the parents he’d lost. “Their daughter is autistic. She couldn’t speak, though.”

“So, it was profound for her,” Nat said as she patted Andrew’s arm.

“Can someone explain what it is?” Scorpius asked them. “It might only be a Muggle thing.”

“It’s pretty complicated,” Nat told them hesitantly. “But basically if he has problems making friends or connecting with people, that would be something like autism. Also, some autistic people are seriously gifted in one area of their lives.”

“That actually sounds like him,” Ryan replied thoughtfully. “He hasn’t ever been able to make a friend and he’s never really tried. I always thought that was because we wouldn’t play with him, but really he just wouldn’t play. He just wanted to make stuff happen. When we wouldn’t go along with it, he got attention by causing problems.”

“I don’t know exactly what’s up with him,” Nat assured her quickly, “but I do know we can’t keep this up. If he doesn’t get the challenge he needs, someone is going to get hurt.”

Andrew studied Ryan for a long moment before he asked, “What do you think we can do to help him?”

Ryan met his gaze and then she shook her head and looked away. “If I’d known that, I’d have done it already. I just don’t know.”

Al watched her and was startled to see tears pool in her eyes and begin streaming down her face. “Ry… I’m sorry.”

She swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands and took the tissue Rose fished out of her bag. “I don’t know… he’s my brother, and I love him, but I just don’t like him! I do feel bad for him.”

“Maybe we can start trying to challenge him,” Nat suggested. “If we offer to teach him things, do you think he’d like that?”

“Maybe?” Ryan said as she dabbed at her eyes and then stared down at the grass. “Yeah, maybe. He likes to learn. You might be able to talk him into knocking off the pranks if he gets to learn things.”

“It’s worth a try,” Al said with a sigh. “Maybe we should see what the teachers are trying to do about him. They have to have a plan.”

It turned out they didn’t have a plan. Al asked to speak to Neville and went over everything they’d discussed with Ryan.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” Neville sighed as he sank onto the edge of his desk and rubbed at his temples. “He’s a student and deserves his privacy.”

“But–”

“But,” Neville held up his hand, “I will say this. We always have a plan for students we feel are going to be a challenge. I think you can come to your own conclusions as to how the plan has gone.”

In other words, badly. Al tapped his foot and nodded slowly. “So if we want to help out a struggling student, you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“As long as you’re as kind as you possibly can be,” Neville said seriously as he leveled his gaze on Al. “I cannot stress this enough, Albus. You have to be calm or things will get a lot worse.”

So they hatched a plan and found the best students in the school and called a meeting in one of the unused classrooms. It was a group of about twenty sixth and seventh years, plus one fifth year who happened to be a star in Ancient Runes.

“I am not helping him,” said one of the sixth-year boys Slytherins who was particularly adept at Charms, pointing threateningly at Al. “That little git has wrecked everything!”

“He’s wrecking everything because he’s bored,” Nat interjected. She held up her hands. “Who here is Muggle-born?”

Five hands went up.

Nat nodded at them. “I think he’s autistic.”

All five of the students let out a collective breath. “That would explain some things,” one of the Ravenclaws agreed. “My brother is autistic.”

“I’ve never heard of kids like this in the magical world, though,” Scorpius pointed out.

“It might be that a magical brain wires itself away from autism,” Nat explained, “or that the children were hidden away from the world. Or, like in the Muggle world, the rates of autism are going up. To get a kid who is a savant and truly gifted is extremely rare, though, so it makes sense we wouldn’t have seen this before. He might be doing all of this to get attention and cause people problems.”

“Hang on,” the Ravenclaw boy shook his head. “That’s not at all what my brother does! He doesn’t do things to make people mad, exactly. He just doesn’t know better and he wants to see what will happen.”

They all fell silent as what he’d said started to sink in.

Ryan’s face went ashen. “You… you think he’s not trying to get back at us. You think he’s just trying to see what he can do?”

“I think it’s a lot more complicated than any of us can imagine,” Nat assured her. “He’s not totally innocent in this, but at the same time he’s probably not completely guilty, either. I think he needs a challenge.”

“How are we going to manage to teach him when we’re stuck under all of our other work and cleaning up his messes?” demanded the Slytherin girl.

“I was going to propose that if he behaves himself, we’d work with him,” Nat said simply.

“I don’t think he can stick to that,” Ryan told her. “He’s been offered rewards before and he never follows through on his end.”

Nat threw up her hands and shook her head. “We can try or spend the next two years clearing up his messes!”

It was a sign of how bad it was that everyone fell silent to contemplate it.

“I don’t want to keep doing this,” Al told her honestly.

“You’re best at Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Nat said, brightening. “You and Hal,” she said pointing to a seventh year Slytherin. “You two can work with him on that.”

Al glanced over at the towering Hal. He had dark hair and brows over a tanned face. The boy nodded to Al and Al nodded back.

“Let’s figure this out, then,” Nat said to the group. “We have to do something.”

The entire group cornered Jacob the next day before dinner. Ryan brought her brother to the same classroom and Al watched him closely. It was only when Nat had pointed out what they might be looking for did he finally see what he’d missed before.

Jacob didn’t meet anyone’s eyes and he kept fidgeting with his robes, over and over again, one buttoning and unbuttoning it. Then he looked up at Al and stared him down for a full ten seconds before he glanced away.

Al had no idea what Jacob was feeling but he suddenly realized how he would have felt if he’d been pulled into a classroom full of older students who were staring him down with definite hostility.

“We want to help you learn,” Al said as compassion for this small kid pulled him forward. He knelt down before Jacob and tried to put a hand on his shoulder but Jacob shrugged him off. Al tried not to take it personally as Jacob’s eyes, so like Ryan’s, met his for a moment. “We know you’re bored, yeah?”

Jacob shifted from one foot to the other and then shrugged, still not looking at him.

“We’re going to take it in turns to help you learn everything you want to know,” Al explained and then waited.

Jacob finally met his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

“Because we’re tired of you wrecking the castle,” Al said and couldn’t help but grin.

Jacob didn’t grin back. He glanced away and shifted his feet. His fingers continued to play with the button. “I didn’t mean for the green paint to go everywhere.”

Ryan snorted and to Al’s shock, he watched Jacob shrink in on himself. Al shot Ryan a warning look and she turned away, heading for the back of the room. He watched Andrew follow after her and his friend talk to her in low tones. “Look,” Al said as he turned back to Jacob. “Whatever you meant to do, it caused a big mess and that’s your responsibility, right?”

“I didn’t mean–”

Al held out his hands. “Accidents happen, but it’s what we do with those that count. We’re going to use this classroom and we’re going to work with you.”

Jacob shifted again. “Your dad taught you to do a Patronus.”

Al blinked. His dad had taught him that a year before. He’d taught all of them last summer since it was a way to communicate. Only Al had really mastered it, though. His was a huge bear which his dad had found interesting. James, to none of their surprise, had the stag. “Yeah, how did you know?”

Jacob didn’t answer him. “Show me.”

So Al did. The first lesson for Jacob was taken up just like that.
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